


Over-Familiarity

by shewhoguards



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: F/M, Slavery, Stockholm Syndrome, doomed romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-17 02:38:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11842230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/pseuds/shewhoguards
Summary: Everyone makes mistakes, and Kamet fell in love with his master's favourite dancing girl. But somehow, however he tries to explain to Costis, he doesn't quite understand how it was.





	Over-Familiarity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [an_english_girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/an_english_girl/gifts).



So, you want to know how it was? Youthful foolishness, no more. Didn’t you say that we all fly under the sign of the idiot at times? Let us say that this was my turn.

It was dangerous for a slave to fall in love, but I was my master’s favourite and I had forgotten what danger felt like. Perhaps, also, I had forgotten a little of what the word slavery meant. I was my master’s trusted advisor, his confidente, perhaps even his friend. He was the boundaries of my world it had been a long time since I thought to test those boundaries. I would be waiting with a celebratory drink when he returned from a successful venture - and at that time, nearly all his ventures were successful. Nahuseresh joked with me, relied on me, and trusted me completely - or so I thought.

Put like that, it feels as though it was I who was at fault for betraying that trust. You must understand that at the time, it never felt like a betrayal.

Marin was beautiful, but of course she was. She was a dancing girl; they are all beautiful. Not many of them can think like she did though, and still less of them can use words the same way flowing like a natural wellspring of poetry. She told me of the valley where she had grown up and I could close my eyes and be there. She described the children she dreamed of and I could almost hear them laughing. More, she could draw me into her daydreams - I who dreamed of nothing more passionate than greater control over my master’s affairs. It is never good for a slave to dwell on the past, but with Marin I found myself describing my lost brothers, the house I had grown up in, the river where we played. With her these memories somehow lost the bitterness and bloomed back into the happiness I had felt at the time.

She was entrancing, and I was proud, and I can offer no other excuses for forgetting my place in such a way. I was too far above others in the household for any there to call themselves my friend, certainly too far for any but my master to reprove me. When we began to exchange fond looks and then later hushed whispers, there was no-one who could have told me what a fool I was being by doing so.

Somehow I convinced myself that, were my master to discover what we were doing, he would see it as an amusing misdemeanor - something to chuckle over and chide me lightly. If I rationalised it at all, it was to think that Nahuseresh cared for me and, I was certain, he loved Marin. Surely therefore if he knew we were together he would only be pleased by our shared happiness.

You needn’t look at me that way. At the time it seemed perfectly sensible. 

I thought we were being highly secretive. Now, I look back and realise half of the estate must have known what was going on. There were too many meetings in my office for no good reason, too many careless kisses in corners that were unlikely to have been as private as I thought they were. I may have considered myself above making friends with other slaves on the estate, but I must have been doing something to make them harbour friendly feelings towards me; I can think of no other reason we were not discovered sooner. 

Even when we began to discuss running away our plans retained that wild dream-like quality. When I was younger I had thought very seriously about running away. I had planned out how I would seek out my mother and younger siblings, how we would flee the city together and somehow find somewhere no-one knew us to scrape out an existence together. But my plans with Marin were more like planning a fantasy; an escape from real life as much as from my master. I thought much about the little house we would share, how many children we should have and what we should name them. I thought nothing at all about how my master would react.

I suppose I should be grateful that he found out before we actually attempted any of our plans. While Nahuseresh was very thorough about showing his displeasure, the penalties for being an escaped slave in the Empire - well, we have discussed those already. Perhaps he even felt forced to punish me severely, to discourage me from getting myself into greater trouble.

Don’t shake your head at me like that. He really would have thought that way.

I remember waking on my master’s floor and wanting to die. I hurt so much that I thought perhaps I should die, and that seemed a welcome event. Marin had gone - it would be some time before I discovered where. It seemed entirely plausible that she was dead. Worse, I had brought it on us both by doing this terrible thing, by betraying my master. Even had I been able to do so, I would not have dared to raise my head to look at him. It was as though I had planned and worked and dreamed in a bubble for months now, and now the reality of my actions was clear as the fragile rainbow dreams burst and collapsed around me. I was more ashamed than ever before in my life as it seemed everything I valued, that made me who I was, suddenly stood in judgment against my selfish fantasies. When the house-boy found me, I waited to hear my master order that I be slung out to somewhere I could die without making a mess. 

Instead he forgave me. You of all people should understand how painful it is to be granted a forgiveness you do not deserve. How that grows in you with a strange hollowness that yearns to find a resolution, a way to pay. He forgave me and he called his own doctor to administer to me. I was allowed the time I needed to grow strong again and if he chided me in that time it was no more than I deserved. Nahuseresh was masterful in the way he dissected my dreams and showed them to be the insubstantial nonsense they were. What, he asked, had I intended - to stand on a street corner and hire our my services as a scribe and hope that no-one noticed what we were? We would have died of hunger, or cold, or worse than that, we would have succeeded and I would have been bored for the rest of my life, wasted. He painted his own pictures; a future where I was left bubbling with resentment as the bloom faded off of this so-called love. They were the words of a friend administering stern common sense where it was needed. Almost, I could forget that the person delivering the lecture was the same person who had delivered the beating the day before. 

He was careful after that to ensure I had no time to grow bored. I was given responsibility after responsibility, and my brain thrived on the challenges I was offered. Sometimes, on the good days when we were celebrating together, he would remind me how fortunate, how privileged I was to be in this position and that I could work to be his brother’s slave one day - assistant to the Emperor himself. It was an imminently more suitable dream and I closed off my brain to the other one; the one where I had Marin, and children, and happiness. One should strive only towards those dreams it is possible to attain. The impossible dreams will eat you from the inside out to no purpose if you let them. 

I truly believe he was intending to be kindly the day we took a trip to that vineyard. I can remember the strangeness in his manner; the casual way he chatted to me as we travelled. My master entrusted me with a lot of things, but he rarely made small talk. I thought that perhaps he was nervous for the meeting ahead.

I did not think that I would walk into my dream.

I couldn’t understand at first why the house we walked into should feel so familiar. I had never been there before but every room would have some little touch, something that felt homely. The curtains were in a pattern I had once admired, the cushions were embroidered in my favourite colours, even the rug reminded me of one we had had in my mother’s house.   
When Merin walked in and stood by the master, I understood.

My house, with all the little touches we had talked and dreamed of. Everything we had ever wanted, except it was someone else’s.

Nahuseresh ignored me, continued his business with the other master. Merin served us drinks as we tried not to look each other in the face. I remember sternly telling myself to be happy that she had all she ever wanted. I remember wanting to spill the tea, just so they would be forced to look at me. 

It wasn’t until we were back in the carriage that Nahuseresh looked at me at all. He spoke in the way he sometimes did when he was not angry but I needed to be corrected; firm and yet kindly, as to a puppy that required further training. “If I thought it would have been good for you, I might have given her to you. But see? You wouldn’t have been happy anyway.”

You see, he did care for us really. Merin he had given her dream, more or less as she wanted it. But me, he had guided in a different direction, the one he thought I needed more. He was thinking more of my needs than the simple half formed ‘wants’ I was grasping for. Merin got what she wanted, I got what needed and so the tale of that part of my life ended.

You needn’t look at me like that. It’s not an unhappy story.


End file.
